Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The implications of the bill before the House today, the Higher Education Support Amendment (Freedom of Speech) Bill 2020, are profound. Freedom of speech in our universities is critical, of course, not only to the integrity of our academics themselves but for our economic and our political success. Our universities are the nurseries of Australia's intellectual future. They are the training grounds for our next leaders and the incubators of the ideas that will preserve our nation's prosperity.

However, the implications go beyond these boundaries and they touch all Australians. When academics and experts refuse to, or are unable to, make the rational, evidenced and nuanced arguments which exist on both sides of almost any debate, then, unfortunately, others will pick up where that vacuum is created. The floor is left to those whose views are more extreme. Australians are not stupid. They know when debate is being silenced and alternative perspectives are being suppressed. When the only voices expressing those alternative perspectives are those with an extreme agenda or, indeed, unbalanced views, unfortunately those are the only voices which are heard and all of us are left poorer as a result.

Sadly, it is clear that freedom of speech and academic inquiry is not currently adequately protected in our universities. In a paper released at the end of 2020 for the Business Council by the University of Sydney's Business School, their international economic director, John Shields, summed up the issue well when he described:

… a form of classroom monoculturalism in which ­encouraging students to embrace the values of academic integrity and free debate, and facilitating the development of core capabilities in critical thinking, effective English communication and cross-cultural competence, have become increasingly difficult.

We will all, no doubt, remember the 2018 case of the proposed course in Western civilisation supported by millions in guaranteed funding from the Ramsay Centre which was rejected by the Australian National University amid uproar from its so-called progressive academic staff. What was particularly striking in that case was the simple fact that opponents of a degree course in Western civilisation clearly believed any such course must present an uncritically positive view of its subject matter. It says a lot about these same academics' approach in teaching their own courses. Clearly at ANU to study a humanities subject is to be indoctrinated in whatever predominant position is supported by the donors. This is not education. It is indoctrination, plain and simple.

The opposition of staff at ANU to such a course is, sadly, made more understandable when you compare it to the same university's equivalent Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. This centre is funded by the governments of the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran. It changed its name from the Centre for Middle Eastern and Central Asian Studies immediately following a particularly large Emirati donation. The centre's former director, Amin Saikal, has made the outlandish statement that Iran:

… provides degree of mass participation, political pluralism and assurance of certain human rights and freedoms which do not exist in most of the Middle East.

However, ANU is not alone. In my own state, the University of Queensland pursued one young man last year with secretive and expensive disciplinary processes following his leadership of a large-scale protest against China's actions towards Hong Kong, alongside other on-campus activism. UQ students report that they've been criticised in assignment feedback for using words like 'mankind', for describing ships with the conventional pronoun 'she' or, most recently, for rightly referring to James Madison as one of the United States's 'founding fathers'. A 2019 survey of 500 Australian students by the Institute of Public Affairs found that 41 per cent felt they were sometimes unable to express their opinions at university, while 31 per cent had been made to feel uncomfortable by a lecturer for expressing their views.

Australia's universities, in fact, have accepted for themselves that they need to do more to guarantee freedom of speech and academic inquiry. Following the Hon. Justice Robert French's independent review in 2019, all Australian universities signed up to put in place the code that he had devised in order to avoid the eroding of fundamental freedom of speech, which is an essential element of academic freedom. However, more than a year on, and despite 33 Australian universities claiming to have made progress in implementing the French model code, by December only nine were found by former Deakin University vice-chancellor Sally Walker to have enacted codes which are consistent with it. The government, I know, will continue to work closely with universities to ensure that more of them are adopting the code. The Minister for Education and Youth has made it clear that he wishes to see that work completed as soon as possible.

In the meantime, the government is acting to ensure that the legislative framework under which universities operate reinforces these principles and forms a constant reminder to universities of their obligations. The bill before the House delivers stronger protections for academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia and, unlike so many of our universities to date, it gives effect to a key recommendation from the 2019 French review: it requires that universities have a policy which upholds freedom of speech and academic freedom. It requires universities to enshrine Justice French's new definitions of the principles which we all agree are an essential part of higher education for academic staff and students alike. It does this simply by amending the Higher Education Support Act 2003.

It also substitutes the terms 'freedom of speech' and 'academic freedom' for the existing term 'free intellectual inquiry' in the act. This not only aligns the language of those provisions with Justice French's proposed model; it also enshrines the principles of academic freedom espoused by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which states:

Academic freedom includes the liberty of individuals to express freely opinions about the institution or system in which they work, to fulfil their functions without discrimination or fear of repression by the State or any other actor …

Finally, by replacing the words 'free intellectual inquiry' in the act, the amendments draw an important distinction between the freedom of speech which we all have and the special aspects of freedom of speech most required to deliver true academic freedom. These include the freedom of academic staff to teach, to discuss, to research, and to disseminate and publish the results of their research. They include the freedom of academic staff and students to engage in intellectual inquiry, to express their opinions and beliefs and to contribute to public debate in relation to their subjects of study and research. In particular, as I mentioned, they include the freedom of academic staff and students to express their opinions in relation to the higher education provider in which they work or are enrolled, which can be critical in this era of universities as global business interests.

This debate is about one of the most fundamental principles that underlie our parliamentary democracy, but it is also about people—academics and ordinary students living in all of our electorates. In our privileged situation in this place, protected by the conventions that support the vigour of our own debates, we must always remember that our constituents do not enjoy those same privileged protections that we do whilst we sit in this place. Today in Australia, almost one-third of students have been discouraged from speaking their minds by those who are responsible for encouraging their intellectual curiosity. Some of our students have faced much worse. Our students and our academics are not extremists. They do not want to hurt anyone with their speech or their ideas. Around the country, we've seen in recent years that many of our people are feeling disenfranchised. Some of them are turning to so-called outsiders who seem to be able to say what they feel that they are prevented from saying themselves. For some, this feeling begins in our educational institutions, but, with the right guarantees, its solution can begin there, too.

Academics are, or should be, in a privileged position to overcome falsehood, prejudice and bias. They have the time, the resources, the skills, the evidence and the intellectual community at their fingertips to thoroughly examine new ideas and vigorously stress-test new claims and new ideas. They operate under an historical assumption of free academic inquiry. In some of our universities, politicisation, intellectual cowardice and ideological enforcement will result in nothing but a perpetuation of the fractures that exist in this country. However, academic freedom, open debate and a willingness to engage fearlessly with the evidence, however uncomfortable that may be, will help to ensure that all Australians feel heard and that the truth ultimately wins out. As we seek to recover from this COVID crisis, now more than ever we need inventive, cutting-edge thinkers—not drones for whom new ideas are a threat rather than an opportunity. We cannot afford to create even one generation of Australians who have been denied the chance to think for themselves. In a world where knowledge and innovation will be the economic drivers of our future, this has never been more important than it is right now.

Beyond economics, as Justice French observed in his review, even a limited number of incidents seen as affecting freedom of speech may have an adverse impact on public perception of the higher education sector, which can feed into the political sphere. Our political process and our economy can only deliver prosperity and opportunity for all Australians of every kind when our academics can express their views and contribute to the national conversation and when our students are encouraged to explore the answers to what are often uncomfortable questions. That's what this bill is about. That's what this bill will help to deliver, and I commend it to the House.

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